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AWS Lake Formation vs Amazon Redshift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 4, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Redshift
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (5th), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (8th)
AWS Lake Formation
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon Redshift is 7.2%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 4.9%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Lake Formation4.9%
Amazon Redshift7.2%
Other87.9%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

PJ
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
Performance optimization and scaling adaptations enable efficient data management
Amazon Redshift does not work alone and requires integration with other AWS tools like S3 and Glue for a complete ecosystem. They should bring the entire ETL data management process into Amazon Redshift. Either they should move Amazon Redshift under Glue, or Glue should be brought under Amazon Redshift. The initial setup could also be improved, particularly in terms of sizing, as it requires trial and error to get right.
Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"For the on-premises version of Amazon Redshift, we need to start from scratch. However, with the cloud version whenever you want to deploy, you can scale up, and down, and it has a data warehousing capability. Redshift has many features."
"Redshift COPY command, because much of my work involved helping customers migrate large amounts of data into Redshift."
"The seamless connection and good scalability on the cloud are valuable features of Amazon Redshift."
"If the analyst knows SQL, which is comfortable and easy to use to go between all of these tool stacks, I think it's reliable. It's a secure and reliable data warehouse."
"I like it because the usage is very similar to Microsoft SQL server. The structure of the query and the temporary tables are very similar."
"Has a very user-friendly SQL editor and it's very easy to use the connectors."
"It allows for the storage of huge amounts of data."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Redshift are that its fast and efficient. We have lots of TBs of data and it's very fast."
"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."
"In the shortest form, what I appreciated about AWS Lake Formation was that the schema definition and data cataloging were quite good."
"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."
"The features and capabilities of AWS Lake Formation that I have found most valuable are that it is really convenient to see all the different data assets that were configured and understand who has and what type of service has or does not have access to those services."
"The main benefits that I have seen from using AWS Lake Formation are related to FinOps because you have control of your data and can track your costs since AWS Lake Formation is integrated into a unique platform, which is AWS Cloud Service."
"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."
"A favorite feature of AWS Lake Formation is that it provides us with visibility into who has access to a particular table or database in Glue."
 

Cons

"The initial deployment was complex."
"Pricing is one of the things that it could improve. It should be more competitive."
"One area where Amazon Redshift could improve is in adopting the compute-separate, data-separate architecture, which Delta, Snowflake are adopting, and a few others in the cloud data warehouse spectrum."
"There are too many limitations with respect to concurrency."
"I rate their support seven out of ten. It's costly when you enable support. The price is high for technical support."
"If you require a highly scalable solution, I would not recommend Amazon Redshift."
"It lacks a few features which can be very useful, such as stored procedures"
"The OLAP slide and dice features need to be improved."
"Despite following official documentation, configuration problems persisted, requiring weeks of support from multiple AWS engineers to resolve."
"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."
"I think AWS Lake Formation could improve by enforcing the least privilege by design, moving from ad hoc grants to role-based access controls."
"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."
"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."
"I haven't seen any measurable benefits from using AWS Lake Formation, such as time saving, resource saving, or efficiency improvements."
"In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions."
"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution implements the pay-as-you-use model, so no license. Pricing could be cheaper."
"It's pay per use. You can have multiple models."
"BI is sold to our customer base as a part of the initial sales bundle. A customer may elect to opt for a white labeled site for an up-charge."
"It's not very pricey compared to other tools. I would rate the price as 5 out of 10."
"The product is quite expensive."
"The cost will depend on how you set up your warehouse and what kind of data you store."
"Pricing for Amazon Redshift is reasonable, though it could be somewhat higher than other solutions, such as Azure. Still, when you base your comparison on the services offered and the pricing, it's the most reasonable versus its competitors, such as RDS."
"The solution is available at a mid-range price compared to other vendors."
"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Media Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Amazon Redshift?
The tool's most valuable feature is its parallel processing capability. It can handle massive amounts of data, even when pushing hundreds of terabytes, and its scaling capabilities are good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...
What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?
My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Liberty Mutual Insurance, 4Cite Marketing, BrandVerity, DNA Plc, Sirocco Systems, Gainsight, Blue 449
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Amazon Redshift and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,606 professionals have used our research since 2012.